AI is just another programming tool
Veteran programmer Michael Heilemann argues that AI-assisted coding is a natural evolution of programming tools, similar to the historical shift from assembly to high-level languages. He emphasizes that while AI can handle implementation details, developers must still define the problem clearly and verify the results to ensure correctness. The article illustrates this dynamic with a case study where AI-generated code for a retro BBS system contained logical errors that required human intervention to fix.
- ▪Michael Heilemann compares AI-assisted programming to the adoption of compilers, noting that both allow developers to work at a higher level of abstraction.
- ▪The author highlights a key difference between compilers and AI, stating that AI decides the algorithmic approach, which is both its strength and its potential weakness.
- ▪In a specific example involving the recreation of a 1980s BBS, AI-generated code failed to correctly handle login timestamps and user lists.
- ▪Heilemann advises that providing specific requirements and constraints to AI leads to better results than vague instructions.
- ▪The article suggests that using AI is similar to managing a junior programmer, where the senior developer must understand the problem well enough to guide the AI when it gets stuck.
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| Original publisher | Norsewanderer |
| Canonical URL | https://norsewanderer.com/blog/blog1.html |
| Publication time | Sat, 19 Sep 2026 16:03:19 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-19T16:18:46.126Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-19T16:18:46.126Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | Vlpv638URGzQ · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
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| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Michael Heilemann, The Norseman / The Viking — Notes on AI-assisted programming from someone who's been at this for almost 50 years There is a variation of an old argument happening around AI-assisted programming: Real programmers write their own code. I've heard a few different versions of this argument before over the years. We moved from writing machine code by hand to writing assembly language. We built libraries so we wouldn't have to repeatedly implement the same functionality. Frameworks gave us structures for building entire classes of applications. APIs let us use systems without knowing how they were implemented. When compilers first started to be used, there were programmers who looked down on people who used them.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Norsewanderer.
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